Drue arrowed down the intake report, condensing the facts in her mind as she read. Yvonne Howington had called the Justice Line for the first time eighteen months earlier, on October 30. She was forty-six, single and lived in a neighborhood on the city’s south side. She’d listed a sister, Francine Meeks, as her emergency contact, and according to the form, Yvonne had viewed one of the firm’s television commercials, which is where she’d seen the firm’s distinctive 777-7777 Justice Line phone number.

On the line where the form asked “Relationship to Injured Party” someone had typed MOTHER.

Drue glanced up at Ms. Howington, who was penciling something into her crossword book. Aliyah, finished with her juice, was folding the plastic straw into segments, and her iPad lay closed in her lap.

The reception desk’s bottom drawer yielded a stack of white printer paper. In the top drawer she found red, blue and yellow highlighter pens, and pads of the neon-colored self-stick tabs used to designate where clients signed documents. She took the tabs, paper and markers over to the girl, squatting down beside her.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. “Looks like you finished your book. Do you like to draw?”

The girl’s face lit up. “Yeah, I like to draw.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Yvonne Howington corrected, not looking up from her book. “We say ‘yes, ma’am’ when we are talking to grown-ups.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Aliyah said.

Drue handed her a few sheets of paper and put the stickies and markers on the carpet beside her. “I’m sorry we don’t have any crayons, but I think markers are way cooler, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she agreed.

“What do you say to the lady?” Yvonne asked, nodding her head at Drue in a reluctant show of gratitude.

“Thank you!” Aliyah said. She seized a marker and began drawing.

Jazmin Mayes, according to the intake sheet, had been twenty-six years old at the time of what the form called “the incident” on September 15, 2016, which had occurred at the Gulf Vista Hotel and Resort on Gulf Boulevard on Sunset Beach.

Drue shivered involuntarily. The Gulf Vista was a gated oceanfront resort development maybe half a mile from her own cottage. She passed the beach side of the property every day during her early morning beach walk, skirting the rows of turquoise-cushioned beach chaises and canvas-topped cabanas. She’d even tried once, but only once, to get a better look at the sprawling property by ignoring all the private property signs and walking up to the fence separating the beach from the pool deck, only to be turned away by a security guard who’d asked to see her resort key.